


All Who Suffer From the Heart

by firefright



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Character Death, jaydick-flashfic: not human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: Some wounds only time can heal, but until then, Dick does his best to make it easier for Jason.





	All Who Suffer From the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Another quick JayDick Flashfic for you here, as part of the challenge over on tumblr. I couldn't resist the prompt 'Not Human'.
> 
> <s>And yes, the title is a partial quote from Dracula.</s>

“I’m not fifteen,” Jason says, shaking when Dick finds him hiding out amongst the nightmarish maze of hedges behind Wayne Manor. “I look it, but I’m not.”

“I know,” Dick says, softly sympathetic to his pain. He doesn’t step too close. Jason’s always been wild and unpredictable since he came back, a product of his Making by al Ghul blood and Lazarus magic rather than his own will. “I know you’re not.”

“I’m not fifteen,” Jason repeats, and there’s blood on his lips where he’s torn them with his own fangs. On his palms, where his claws have grown and he’s clenched his fingers too tight. Dick can smell it, sweet and beckoning across the distance between them. “But you all look at me like I am. He_ treats_ me like I am.”

“I know, Jay.” Dick steps closer, letting his footsteps brush the grass in a whisper. “I know. I’m not nineteen, either.”

Jason looks up at him, and the pain in his luminous green eyes is almost unbearable to witness. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want it. It’s not my fault.”

No, Dick thinks. No, it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault he was murdered when he was fifteen, in the middle of the day and far away from where any of them could protect him. It’s not his fault that his body was stolen by a rival vampire clan, and turned in a way that was cold and unnatural. It’s not his fault that he was used by them, fashioned into a weapon and turned loose in the heart of Bruce’s city, in a calculated bid to wound him.

It’s not his fault, and yet it happened. None of them can change it.

“I know,” he says, helplessly. “I know.”

“He’s still pissed at me for what I did; he doesn’t trust me. He never will.”

Dick levers himself down beside Jason once he’s sure the younger boy isn’t going to come at him with claws and teeth just for doing so. As angry and upset as he is, Jason seems to have a hold on himself tonight. On the ever present green-tinged fury that lives inside him.

“He will, Jay,” he says, “You just need to give him more time.”

“How much time?” Jason stares straight ahead of him, at one of the elaborately trimmed hedge-rabbits that mark the boundary of this part of the garden. There are wet tear tracks down his cheeks Dick knows better than to call out. “A month, a year? A _century_? I’m doing everything he’s asked of me, drinking dead blood from bags and staying out of the city. What more does he want?”

Dick sighs softly. He wishes there was a way he could make it easier for him, and take back all the rage-fuelled, blood-filled months that had preceded this eventual, slow attempt at reconciliation. The worst part is, Jason really is doing all Bruce has asked of him. The only thing he’s lacking is patience, because it’s true what they say; it takes a lifetime to build up trust, and only a second to break it.

And for their kind, a lifetime can be a very, very long time indeed.

In the end, all he can do is attempt to reassure him. “You just need to keep doing what you’re doing, he’ll come around. He wants you here, Jason; we all do.”

Jason turns his face away from him. “Doesn’t feel like it, most days. I’m so sick of him treating me like a kid. I’m not, I’m a fucking adult. I just...” He opens one of his bloody palms, staring at it. “Why did I have to get stuck looking like this?”

Dick looks, too, feeling the same injustice Jason feels in his heart. He looks at how small Jason’s hand is, the boneiness of his wrist, attached to an arm that is just as lean and awkward as the rest of him. Then further up to the sharp line of his jaw and the soft roundness of puppy-fat still left in his cheeks. There are hints there, of the man Jason might have grown up to be if he’d had the chance, but that’s all they’ll ever be now. Hints.

At least when Dick had died, mortally wounded by a bullet at the age of nineteen, he’d already done most of his growing, and felt comfortable enough in the body he had to be satisfied with it for the rest of eternity, should he be so lucky to make it that far.

“I wish I’d stayed dead.” Jason says bitterly, “I _should_ have stayed dead.”

Dick’s hand is over his in an instant. 

“No,” he says, clutching it tight, “You shouldn’t.” He doesn’t know exactly what this latest argument between Jason and Bruce was, but it must have been a doozy to get him being so openly melancholy. Usually, Jason gets angry when he’s upset, yells and snarls and destroys things. But this… “The circumstances weren’t—aren’t perfect, Jay, we can all admit that. But none of us would rather you weren’t here at all. Especially not Bruce. Not being there to save you when you died is the biggest regret he has.”

Jason stares down at their joined hands like he’s seeing an alien creature, and Dick can feel his blood against his skin, hot and sticky. It sends an unwelcome bolt of hunger through his stomach that he forcibly ignores.

“It’s why he fought so hard to bring you home again. Hell, he would have Changed you himself if he could have — if you’d wanted it. This is where you belong. With us. With your family.”

“My family,” Jason repeats, blankly.

“Yes, your family.” Dick insists, “That’s what we are, what we’ve never stopped being.” He loops his free arm around Jason’s skinny shoulders to draw him closer. “Once a part of the clan, always a part of the clan, remember?”

Jason is stiff as a corpse next to him, but he doesn’t try to pull away, either. “That’s a dumb fucking saying.”

“You didn’t think it was dumb when you were twelve.”

“Yeah, well when I was twelve I was just happy to have a roof over my head and food in my belly.” Jason sniffles, before rubbing the hand Dick isn’t holding across his eyes. “Fuck, I miss food.”

Dick smiles. The change in subject isn’t akin to agreement on Jason’s part, but it is a slight giving of ground as much as it is an attempt at distraction, since his claws retract and the green in his eyes gains back its hint of blue. “Me too. Some days, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t do to be able to eat a cheeseburger again.”

“Chilli dogs,” Jason says. “Fries. _Chocolate_.”

“Okay, now you can shut up. You’re making me hungry.” Turning his head, Dick noses against the thick, black curls of Jason’s hair. He smells like old blood and gunpowder, night air and the remnants of the cologne he’s obviously used in an attempt to cover those other scents up.

Jason is quiet for a moment. Then, “It gets easier, right?”

“Does what get easier?”

“This. Missing things and never changing.”

Dick closes his eyes. It’s been more than twenty years since he was turned and he still wakes up a lot of nights with dreams of sunlight and hot meals lingering in the back of his mind. But he can’t tell Jason that right now, he needs to hold him steady and not let him sink under the weight of what he’s become. “I can only speak for myself, but yeah, eventually. It takes a long time, but it does get easier.”

“Fuck.” Jason sags a little more heavily against him, and Dick takes the opportunity to rub his hand up and down his arm. They used to sit together like this a lot when he was younger. Back when Jason was human, a kid who had chosen the wrong (or right) man to rob one night, and instead of wiping his memory and leaving Jason where he had found him, Bruce had instead brought him back home with the idea of giving him a better life. If only it hadn’t all gone so horribly wrong. “I just… wish there was a shortcut on it. Wish there was a shortcut on all of this shit.”

Dick knows he’s not just talking about the difficulties of being a vampire there. “Me too, sometimes.”

Jason shakes his head, and the next couple moments pass in silence, after which Dick squeezes his hand. “Come on. The sun’ll be coming up in about an hour, we should go back inside.”

“I don’t want to see Bruce again.” Jason instantly mutters, sullen and teenager-like despite his earlier protestations about his age.

Dick rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m not leaving you to burn alive out here either.” Lifting his hand from Jason’s arm, he tugs at a lock of his hair. The one that grows in a curious shade of white ever since he came back from the dead. “Tell you what, how about you come stay with me in my room today? It’ll be like a sleepover; no Bruces invited.”

“I’m not fifteen, Dick,” Jason grumbles anew, but still takes his time pulling away from him while saving letting go of his hand for last. “Don’t call it that.”

“I’m not hearing a no.”

Jason growls and hits him, far lighter than he could, in the shoulder. It makes Dick laugh.

“All right, all right.” he says, “Come on, we’ll sneak in through the window. That way, Bruce won’t know where you are, and he can worry about it until tomorrow.”

A little cruel perhaps. Not being a child of his blood, Bruce can’t sense Jason’s whereabouts like he can Dick’s, but the idea satisfies Jason, making him finally agree with a sharp nod. Dick did enough rebelling in his own day to know how important that is.

And if he’s, perhaps, pleased with the idea of having Jason sleep next to him today for his own sake, well… no one else has to know.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](https://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)


End file.
